


We Were All Someone

by GretchenSinister



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-25 01:37:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20368498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "Before he became the Boogeyman, Pitch was once a human, with a home and a family. Once he knows this, Jack can’t help but sympathize.Bonus: The Guardians were always aware of Pitch’s backstory, but never thought to tell Jack about it. When he learns the truth, he’s not happy to have been kept in the dark."Tooth and Sandy come to talk to Jack after he storms off upon learning that Pitch was once human. They genuinely don’t understand his reaction, and they all have to work through it.





	We Were All Someone

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 10/19/2016.

“Are you ready to talk, yet?” Tooth asked Jack.  
  
He startled, nearly losing his balance on the rooftop. Until she had spoken, her approach had been utterly silent—probably because she didn’t want him to fly away before she was close enough to say something. He was tempted to fly off anyway. Hadn’t they thought it was important? Hadn’t they thought it was relevant? And to find out about Pitch’s family only after his nightmares had dragged him beneath the earth! How could they have kept that from him?  
  
He wasn’t sure why he stayed, then. Perhaps it was simply the knowledge that his questions weren’t going to go away on their own. “More than before,” he said. He looked at her. “Is it just going to be you?”  
  
She shook her head. “Sandy’s not far. But North and Bunny aren’t here. We thought it would be better if you were the only person likely to shout during this conversation.”  
  
“Thanks,” Jack said after a moment. “Well, all right. Where’s Sandy?”

* * *

  
  
“So,” said Tooth, once the three of them were sitting on Sandy’s cloud, “in a conversation recently, Pitch’s past was referenced, and, Jack, you asked for clarification. When you got it, you reacted with outrage and left. Sandy and I are here to talk about what happened and try to deal with this subject calmly.” She folded her hands. “I know this might upset you again, but can you please explain exactly how this situation causes you distress?”  
  
Jack threw his hands in the air. “Is this really necessary? This isn’t a counseling session, this is—I don’t know! And just because it’s Pitch, do you really think it wouldn’t bother me to learn—” Jack made a noise of frustration.  
  
Sandy held up his hand. _Yes, this is really necessary. We genuinely don’t understand your reaction._  
  
Jack took a deep breath. “I guess I can believe that from you, Sandy. Okay. So. We fight against Pitch, we go all out, he says he wants to be seen, and that’s already enough to hurt, when that’s all I wanted, too, and then, in Antarctica, he said he knew what it was like to long for a family, and now I find out that’s true? And no one told me? How could you keep that from me? I could have…”  
  
He trailed off, and after a few beats of silence, Tooth spoke again. “Would that knowledge have changed your actions that drastically? Pitch knows about his own past, and he still acted the way he did.”  
  
“Well, maybe if the Guardians _cared_ about his past,” Jack began angrily, “maybe—”  
  
Sandy held up a hand, looking grimly at Jack. _We have existed with Pitch for hundreds of years before your human body was born. We have known he had a human past all that time, and the specifics of it for most of it._  
  
“When I said all of us were someone before we were chosen, I didn’t know that you thought I was excluding Pitch,” Tooth said. She folded her hands. “Jack, I keep the memories of every human, and everyone who was once human. Everyone who ever grew up to do terrible things was once a child, and most of them had families, too. This isn’t something unique to Pitch.”  
  
_And we do care about his past._ Sandy told Jack. _He was chosen by the same means as the rest of us. There is a place for him in the balance of this world, even if we have not successfully found it, yet._  
  
“If that’s the case, why did you fight him the way you did?” Jack asked.  
  
Tooth and Sandy looked at each other. “Because of what he was trying to do and what he did,” Tooth said, sounding puzzled. “Whatever his future might be, whatever his past was, we always have to face him as he is, in the now. We don’t fight Pitch because he’s inherently evil and incapable of change. If that was the case, we would have sought him out and destroyed him after the very first time we defeated him. It’s not pleasant, but we’ve done it to other beings before.”  
  
“You’ve…killed?” Jack looked utterly shocked.  
  
“When we’ve encountered a being that could not exist without harming children, yes,” Tooth said. “North’s swords weren’t made to be used against creatures of sand. But, to return to Pitch: He doesn’t have to be as hostile as he was recently. But, recently, we fought him because he tried to destroy the Guardians and leave children with nothing but fear.” Tooth reached out and found Sandy’s hand. “We didn’t know if Sandy could come back. After Pitch shot him—Pitch could have saved my own life in the past, and it wouldn’t have mattered to me.”  
  
Jack looked down at his knees. Sandy tapped one, prompting him to look up. _Pitch has the same kind of powers as the rest of us. He could have killed me permanently. The fact that he didn’t is actually a sign of hope._  
  
“But you—we—let him get dragged away by nightmares,” Jack said. “If there’s hope for him, why let that happen?”  
  
_Knowing there’s hope for someone isn’t the same as being ready to ignore everything they did over the past few days._ Sandy looked to Tooth. _We’ll need to put more effort towards Pitch’s situation, soon._  
  
Tooth nodded. “These cycles are doing more harm than good.” She looked at Jack again. “And we want to avoid doing harm and actively do good. That’s the important thing. Pitch isn’t secretly a good guy because he had a family once. We aren’t secretly bad guys because we’ve killed when we saw no alternative. What matters is the sum of our actions and our choices. Being a Guardian isn’t about ‘being’ a good guy. It’s protecting children—not a state of being.”  
  
“You can’t be saying that the past doesn’t really matter,” Jack said.  
  
“Of course not—with my center? But it’s not important on its own. Only in how it relates to the present.”  
  
Jack sighed. “I…I know that it wouldn’t have really made a difference in what I did if I had known Pitch’s past. And, well, like you said, he knows about it. But learning about it—it feels like finding out again that I had a human past. It feels like another parallel between me and Pitch, even if it really isn’t one. I feel like there’s so little that separates us. That I could have been like him.”  
  
“Maybe you could have been, but you aren’t,” Tooth said.   
  
_But those parallels shouldn’t be ignored, either,_ Sandy added. _They’re important, not because they mean you’re likely to be bad, but because they might help when we reach out to Pitch this time._  
  
“Will you help us?” Tooth asked. “And will you come back? I’m sorry we didn’t realize there were parallels that might upset you. Can you be patient with us? We had belief, but we’ve all been by ourselves for a long time, too.”  
  
Jack nodded, and nodded again. “I’ll come back,” he said quietly. 


End file.
